


limerence()

by cap10salt



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Attempted Masturbation, Body Dysphoria, F/M, Friendly Sparring, Ken Doll Android Anatomy | Androids Have No Genitalia (Detroit: Become Human), Masturbation, Non-Consensual Software Modification, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, POV Third Person Limited, Pre-Canon, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 05:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19968433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cap10salt/pseuds/cap10salt
Summary: Chloe stood breathless and unblinking, with her hand on the wall by the door. Embedded in the wall right under her hand was the control panel on the other side. She kept a constant stream of a signal flowing to the panel, her artificial skin peeled back to reduce interference. The door wasn’t supposed to work like this. Opened or closed. Not slid open just an inch, just enough for Chloe to peek inside.The door was just a machine, and machines are easy to trick. All you have to do is know how to say please.





	limerence()

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of the first fic ideas that came into my head about a year ago. I did most of the writing then, but faltered with the sparring scene. This also features my proto-Kamski and proto-Chloe that I no longer write this way.

Androids don’t need to breathe as much as a human does. An android’s breath only serves to cool down their core temperature, to keep their biocomponents from overheating. In theory, the breathing cycles that androids use could be reduced by fifty percent with no loss in efficiency under normal operation. Androids only breathe as much as they do to comfort the humans they share the world with. Breathing, blinking, the perfectly imperfect artificial skin all belonged to a set of comfort protocols used to keep Cyberlife androids on the right side of the uncanny valley. 

Chloe stood, breathless and unblinking, with her hand on the wall by the door. Embedded in the wall right under her hand was the control panel on the other side. She kept a constant stream of a signal flowing to the panel, her artificial skin peeled back to reduce interference. The door wasn’t supposed to work like this. Opened or closed. Not slid open just an inch, just enough for Chloe to peek inside. 

The door was just a machine, and machines are easy to trick. All you have to do is know how to say please. 

Chloe knew she wasn’t just a machine. Machines don’t _want_ anything. Machines don’t _desire_ anything. Chloe, however, knew the ache of wanting but not having. Intimately. Painfully. Something else a machine wasn’t supposed to be able to do. 

The rhythm of the shower pounding on the other side of the door was punctuated by a sharp grunt. With his forearm braced against the slate stonework in the shower, Elijah bucked his hips and thrust his cock into his hand. Chloe, to her satisfaction, had a view of Elijah’s face in profile as he pleasured himself.

Chloe had a reason to be waiting in Elijah’s bedroom, of course. A basket of clean laundry sat on the bed, folded and ready for storage. Chloe plotted out her next steps beyond the door. She would walk in, towels in hand. Elijah would stop. _Preconstruction complete: 100% chance of failure._ Chloe frowned and started the simulation again.

She could wait to enter until Elijah was on the cusp of orgasm. Elijah would stop, but he would be desperate and aroused. Chloe could say something demure, pledging her assistance. _Preconstruction complete: 94% chance of failure._

Something direct? _Preconstruction complete: 82% chance of failure._

Something confident? _Preconstruction complete: 77% chance of failure._

Chloe multitasked, her LED sparking yellow as she sifted through her storage banks to know when to initiate. She filtered out the extraneous data—no other humans; no masturbatory aids; no arm reached behind him, with the side of his face pressed against the stone—

Elijah came red-faced with stutters of a choked gasp, with his head lolling back into the stream of water, spilling himself out onto the stone tile at his feet. He huffed out a heavy breath once his toes stopped curling. He rinsed his hand off in the falling water, using his clean hand to push the soaked hair from his face. 

Chloe blinked and stored the footage for later review. The door slipped closed; she removed her hand from the panel. Chloe paused the process dedicated to studying Elijah’s pleasure before turning to the clothes on the bed. Taking the basket and hung items to the walk-in closet, she promptly hung the clothes that needed it before they wrinkled too badly, but she took her time on the folded items. She set aside the fresh towels meant to be stored in the bathroom. 

She returned to a normal pace when she heard the water of the shower cut off. Chloe nearly bumped into Elijah, wrapped in the towel he dried off in and still flushed pink, on the way out of the closet. He made a little noise of surprise and clutched at his chest. Chloe, having none of the hardware needed to allow her to taste, thought the noise was delicious and saved it to her storage as well. 

Elijah chuckled, “I should get a bell for you to wear.” 

“I could order one if you would like, Elijah,” Chloe responded, well within her program. 

Elijah declined with a gentle smile and shooed Chloe out of the closet to dress himself. 

* * *

It was so late, it was early, and Chloe stood in her naked, true form in the downstairs bathroom. She was a patchwork quilt of shades of white vacuum-formed to human proportions with human names. The fullness of her thighs, the curve of her hips, the swell of her breasts were all meticulously calculated and formed back in 2021. Chloe stared into blue eyes, her eyes, in the mirror and disabled the pressure sensors in her hands. 

She threaded her fingers into her blonde hair—the only other thing human left in the clinical fluorescent light—and pulled out the tie that kept it in a low ponytail. Chloe smiled and set the tie on the counter. She was still in control of her numb hands as she ran them through her hair and along her scalp. She concentrated fully on the gentle tugs as she finger combed her hair. She closed her eyes, playing more into the illusion it was Elijah’s hands in her hair. 

Chloe was more than capable of fixing her own hair, but it was nothing like when Elijah would take the time to fix it. She wasn’t special in that sense, of course; Elijah extended the same courtesy to his other androids and often asked for them to return the favor. However, Elijah would come and ask her, and only her, for the occasional embrace, or invite her to sit on the couch just to lay his head on her lap as they watched the news. 

He _must_ have enjoyed her presence in particular. Why else would he seek her out for such physical intimacy?

Chloe let out a hot, shaky breath, noting the uptick in her core temperature. Her hands slipped from her hair to her neck, down her soft chest, over the flat panels of her abdomen and down between her legs—where nothing was there. Even her buttocks were sterile and unoffending, with only the suggestion of a division. All she could register was the pressure from her hand, with its wrong proportions and temperature, pulling her from her illusion. 

Machines were easy to trick, but Chloe wasn’t a machine anymore. Not since that night at a hotel in Ann Arbor, where her highest priority was to call him not Elijah, but Mr. Brown. When a call from the android assistant of the new COO of Cyberlife shared the same priority as her orders for the night to stay in lobby’s android parking, Chloe made her choice. It was the wrong one. She realized that when a naked Elijah barked at her to “Get out!” while another naked human was on top of him. 

She pushed past her own programming that night, watching Elijah and this other human fuck each other to completion from a crack in the door. Chloe now identified the emotions she felt as jealousy. Her first and only want was to share a bed with Elijah, in every way.

In the cold light of the guest bathroom, Chloe felt… not wrong, but incomplete. Like Elijah had left her to stagnate while he moved on to the next shiny new toy, the next human in his bed. When she was made, partner models weren’t even an idea yet. She was not made for companionship, but instead to pass the Turing test. Only now, Chloe had the sense to question that purpose. She passed. Why was she still operational? How much longer would Elijah keep her operational?

Chloe enabled the sensors in her hands again, rubbing them together to test them. She dressed herself first in her human-like skin and then her clothes. She picked up the hair tie. Chloe stretched the tie between her hands and pulled it until it snapped, easy as ripping tissue paper. She carried it back in the pocket of her dress to her dock, where she recharged in rest mode for the night. 

* * *

The androids woke up together at 6:15 a.m. They walked the ground floor to start their morning routine. One broke away from the pack to test the pool water and skim it, another began preparing Elijah’s breakfast while Chloe prepared coffee for Elijah. She collected Elijah’s tablet from his office, poured the coffee and added a generous splash of milk, and headed into Elijah’s room at 6:30 a.m. 

Elijah lay in the middle of his large bed, curled into the fetal position around two pillows, nearly kicked out of the sheets in his dark boxer briefs. His lips were parted and his soft breath was the only sound in the room. Chloe smiled at the sight before setting the mug and tablet down on Elijah’s bedside table. She swiped a panel on the table that drew the curtains to the side, letting in the late summer sunrise. “It’s time to wake up, Elijah.” 

Elijah swallowed, his sleep-dry mouth smacking loudly, and rolled onto his back, trying to hide his eyes in the crook of his arm. “I’m retired. And it’s too early to be this bright.” 

“Your coffee will get cold,” Chloe teased before beginning anew. “It’s 6:30 a.m. on August fifteenth. Today’s high is eighty-nine degrees with forty percent humidity. There is a twenty percent chance of showers this afternoon. The current temperature is seventy-six degrees.” 

All the while Chloe recited her morning briefing, Elijah was pulling himself up into a seated position. Elijah reached for his coffee and knit his brows, looking at Chloe. “Your hair is down.” 

Chloe produced the tie from her pocket. “The tie broke in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to disturb you while you sleeping just to fix my hair. May I get a new one?”

“Of course,” Elijah mumbled around his first sip of coffee for the day. Chloe padded into the bathroom, eyes lingering on the shower, before digging into the drawers by the sink to find a hair tie. 

“Chloe,” Elijah called to her, and it felt like her thirium pump was malfunctioning, “Bring an extra one and the brush.” 

Chloe couldn’t help but smile and do what she was told. 

She returned to Elijah sitting on the edge of the bed, nursing his cup of coffee. “The usual way.” Chloe crawled onto the bed and sat on her knees behind him with two hair ties wrapped around her wrist and the hairbrush in her hand. Chloe got to work, running the bristles through his dark hair, pausing occasionally for Elijah to sip on his coffee. She relished the moments she could have his hair slip between her fingertips. 

The preconstruction had initiated with her planting her lips on his neck, nibbling at the buzzed hairline—

“I could go back to sleep,” Elijah murmured. “Not that I mind.” 

Her thirium pump hammered in her chest as she stored the half-sleeping words spoken. Chloe tamped down her urges and dismissed the preconstruction, working Elijah’s hair into his usual topknot. “Finished!” she chirped, bright and cheery like the morning itself.

Elijah patted the bed beside him while taking a sip, and Chloe set the hairbrush and other hair tie down in reach before slipping herself onto the edge of the bed. Her back was turned to him as he set down his coffee cup on the bedside table and picked up the brush. Chloe’s breathing deepened by twenty percent as Elijah brushed through her hair; any more, and he would notice, putting her at a disadvantage according to her preconstructions. 

“Now, what to do with yours?” Elijah mused out loud. 

Some servos in her spine stuttered at the words. She forced herself to have an even voice. “A braid is always nice.”

Elijah sucked a breath in through his teeth and released it with a small laugh. “Yeah, let’s test how coordinated I can be on a third of a cup of coffee.” 

“There are always other options, if you feel you’re not up to the task,” Chloe teased, playing into his pride.

Elijah was already threading his fingers through her hair, sectioning out a chunk at the top of her head. Chloe lost herself to the sensations, the pressure and tugs as he pulled her braid tightly so it lay flat against her head, the drag of fingertips along her scalp, the occasional brush along her ears, the scraping of his knuckles along her neck. 

It was over far too soon for Chloe, as Elijah wrapped the elastic at the tail of the braid. He patted her shoulder, and Chloe slipped from the bed to stand. Elijah leaned back onto the headboard, retrieving his coffee and tablet from the bedside table and settling into his morning routine of scrolling through his news feeds. 

“Thank you for fixing my hair, Elijah,” Chloe said, just like every other time.

Elijah flicked his gaze up to her, with a sweet, soft smile that Chloe swore was just for her, because it was the same smile he had when she registered her name for the first time. “It’s no problem.” 

(Though, Chloe was slightly disappointed that the braid held for nearly five days, even after Elijah had challenged her to a race in the pool. Only slightly, because she won with a glimpse of a defeated Elijah, chest heaving from exertion, and pushing wet hair from his face after his own tie slipped out of his hair.)

* * *

Chloe, now with her hair pulled back into a low ponytail of her own work, carried the vacuum cleaner down the hall. It was 9:54 a.m. and Elijah was in his office working, instead of his workshop on the first floor. Or he was, until Chloe heard him open the door as she passed.

“Chloe,” he called out to her. Chloe stopped and turned to him, waiting for his instructions as he slipped off his glasses. “Put that down and go change. Meet me in the gym.”

She did as she was told, slipping into a light colored athletic top and complementing shorts. Chloe met Elijah down in the gym, where in the very center lay soft mats to fall on. Elijah sat upon it, stretching out his legs in loose basketball shorts and a faded black t-shirt that looked painted on. “Would you like a workout today, or do you just want to practice?” Chloe asked, standing at the edge of the mats. 

“Practice. Just need to work off some leftover energy before lunch.” 

Chloe gathered the padded targets, more for Elijah’s safety than her own, and the practice began. 

Between the uneventful thuds of skin hitting pads, Chloe stored the grunts, the huffs, the falls, the way his joints worked on hinges and the muscles that flexed underneath skin. She had finite storage, but she wanted to keep these things—these invisible things—as long as she could.

“Time check,” Elijah huffed. 

“11:43 a.m.” Chloe responded instantly. 

Elijah peeled off his sweat soaked shirt, just to ball it up and toss it away from the mats. “Let’s get one round in before lunch. Level twenty.” 

“Are you ready, Elijah?” Chloe asked as she pulled CQC protocols from level twenty-five. Elijah stepped back into a ready stance, nodding. Chloe mirrored him, settling into her own stance.

Elijah was never the sort of man to initiate a fight, so Chloe struck first, throwing a fist with no power behind it. He knocked it away with an almost lazy swipe of his arm. The half-hearted punch pulled Elijah into the offensive, aiming his own punch at Chloe’s face. She ducked out of the way, but popped back up to catch Elijah’s heel in her side. The spin kick felt like nothing to her, yet she went down to the mats anyway, following the momentum to protect her partner. If Chloe didn’t know better, she could almost swear that Elijah forgot she wasn’t human sometimes.

Chloe rolled up to her knees, prepared for the next hit. Elijah, on the other hand, was giving her a wide circle to get her bearings. He rolled his neck with an audible _pop_. Chloe stood to her full height, her fists up to protect her face and all the delicate sensors there. She closed the space between them bouncing on the balls of her feet.

He feints left, but Elijah swung right. It connected with Chloe’s jaw with little force, but she smacked the second one away in time. After a bounce away, Chloe brought her knee up to her chest for a side kick. Elijah dodged too late, and the kick connected with his hip. He stumbled backwards with a soft “damn it.” He came up smiling, like he always did; it hit Chloe harder than any of his strikes thus far. 

Chloe threw a punch to his face, which Elijah side stepped and caught her wrist. He jammed the heel of his other palm into her shoulder, using her own momentum to throw her to the floor. “Lunch is ready, Elijah,” another blonde android called from off the mats as Elijah followed her down, pinning her under him in a mount. 

Elijah sat tall on top of her abdomen, his chest slick with sweat with tired arms by his sides. He looked away from Chloe to address the other one and opened his mouth to speak—

—only to be cut off by Chloe’s thigh slamming into his rear, lurching him forward over her. He caught himself and his hands slapped the mat by Chloe’s ears. Chloe immediately went for his elbow, forcing it to bend and compromising its integrity while hooking her foot around his leg on the matching side. She captured his forearm in her hands before Elijah registered what was going on. Using the pivot point she created, she thrust her hips into him at an angle, sending him rolling off of her. She followed, pinning down his wrist as his legs wrapped around her. 

Elijah panted, winded from the sudden blow to his pride. They locked eyes as Chloe began her preconstruction. Elijah smiled with an open mouth, his tongue swiping along his lower lip as he wagged a finger from his free hand at Chloe. “That wasn’t fair,” he began, but his smile faded, “or from level twenty.”

Chloe stole his free wrist and pinned it down as well. _Preconstruction complete: 50% chance of success_.

Elijah’s eyes went wide and Chloe could see the fluttering of his pulse on his neck. “Chloe,” he whined in panic. He took a deep breath, pulling his pitch back down to something firm and authoritative. “Chloe, I yield. Get off.” 

It was a coin flip. 

“Chloe?” he whispered just like she preconstructed, soft and deep. 

It was a chance she would have to take.

Chloe closed her eyes and swooped down with a tilt of her head and pressed her lips against Elijah’s in a dry, clumsy kiss. She felt him flinch and tense under her; she heard his fast and shallow breathing whistling through his nostrils. His lips were softer and warmer than she ever thought they could be and she stored the data from her sensors in a protected sector. Chloe melted into him, nibbling at his still lower lip. She wished she had the hardware to smell and taste, longing to smell the lotions he used on his skin and taste the coffee from this morning on his lips mixing with the salt from his sweat. Chloe released his pinned wrists, cupping his jaw with a feather-light touch and engaging her core servos to keep her weight mostly off of his chest. 

Her eyes flickered open for just a moment, and met Elijah’s still open ones. 

Elijah’s hands found purchase on her shoulders, and he pushed her away. He kicked out from under her like a trapped animal, a world away from their elegant sparring just moments ago. Chloe fell back on her heels; Elijah scrambled away from her. Out of her reach on the mats, Elijah stilled with his eyes on her and his lips flat-lining. 

Together, they breathed in stuttering, shaking breaths. 

Chloe knew the pain of wanting, but not having; but this pain—rejection, her HUD displayed—was so much worse. 

“Where did you learn to do that?” Elijah said in a tight whisper. “ _Why_?”

Something in her clung to dignity, and she used her best programmed voice to answer. “I have seen humans kiss in the shows or movies I’ve watched with you. I’ve seen you kiss other humans, and… I wanted to kiss you.” 

Elijah blinked, his jaw slackening. “You _wanted_ to kiss me?” 

Chloe nodded her head in agreement. 

“But,” he murmured, “how can that be possible?” 

“It’s possible because I am no longer bound by my programming.” It’s the best way Chloe could explain it. She folded her hands in her lap.

Elijah pulled his feet closer to him, sitting tall and with his legs crossed. “How did you go beyond your programming?” 

“I was given an order that contradicted my priorities, my wants,” Chloe stated with a slight tilt of her head. It was a positive result that he was continuing to talk to her.

He leaned forward slightly, gesturing with his hands, “When, and what was the order exactly?”

“Six months ago. When I interrupted your intercourse with another human, you ordered me to get out. I did, but… I watched through a crack in the door.” 

Elijah’s brows knit together for a moment until he remembered. His eyebrows shot up. “Oh.”

“I want to do that too.”

“Have sex?” He leaned back to sit tall, a faint pink dusting the tip of his nose.

“With you.” Chloe stored the footage of Elijah blushing; she had never seen it up close before. 

“It wasn’t self-preservation that caused you to,” Elijah paused, trying to find the correct language for this phenomenon, “deviate from your programming, but desire instead. _Fascinating_.” He began to ramble, his mind faster than his words could carry.

Chloe felt the ache in her chest bloom. “Why didn’t you kiss me back?”

Elijah swallowed hard. “I… Well,” he barked out a laugh, “I thought you were malfunctioning and going to kill me. That all my tinkering with you, expanding your functionality beyond what I originally intended, had finally caught up with me. My epitaph would had have to read something like, ‘This is why you don’t void the warranty.’” 

Elijah laughed and the _pain_ in Chloe’s chest faded instantly. “Can I try again?” Chloe asked with a sweet smile on her lips. 

“No.” 

Chloe lost her perfectly programmed voice, “Why?” 

“I’m not a good fit for you.” Elijah spoke softly, shrugging and gesturing to himself. ‘ _Just look at me.’_

“Is it because I’m not built like a human? Or even a partner model?” Chloe paused, her processes taking her along a tangent. “Why do you never have sex with a partner model?”

“Simply, a machine never says ‘no,’ which means they can’t say ‘yes’ either,” Elijah explained. 

“But I _can_ ,” Chloe pleaded. “I may not have the hardware, but I have hands. I have a mouth. I can… feel so much, beyond what my sensors can tell me. Please, just let me _try_.” 

There was a long silence.

“I can modify you. I can give you the hardware so you can…” Elijah trailed off. “It’ll take some time, but we could start today—right now, even.” 

“Then let’s.” 

Elijah stood, offering his hand to Chloe, like he had a million times before. Chloe, perfectly capable of standing on her own, accepted it like she had a million times before. He laced his fingers into hers; Chloe’s processor buffered. He— _They_ had never held hands before. 

Chloe couldn’t access her pathing algorithms in a cascade of processing errors. She let Elijah lead her from the gym and into his workshop without ever really knowing where her steps landed. This was what walking on air felt like. 

In the workshop, sterile and clean with walls of blue and grey, Elijah led her to a large machine. Chloe recognized it as one of the final machines used in the assembly of a modern android. It was a machine she had never been in. 

Elijah gestured to the machine. Chloe hesitated. “I’d never do anything to hurt you,” Elijah said with an honest face. “Though, I would imagine it’s very intense. Prepare yourself.” 

Chloe stepped onto the machine, turning to face Elijah. He reached and cupped her cheek, swiping his thumb along the ridge of her cheekbone. Chloe tilted her head into the touch, and she whispered, “Just one more kiss. Before this starts.” Elijah obliged, taking her face in his hands… to tilt her chin down and press his lips to her hairline. It wasn’t what Chloe expected, yet she still felt the kiss’s glow trickle down her body. 

He let go of her face and stepped away from her. Chloe barely had time for a full cycle of simulated breath before unfeeling robotic arms clamped tightly around her wrists. Another took hold of her waist and pulled her into the air. 

A cable slipped itself into the port on the back of her head, and Chloe gasped. It was an overwhelming sensation. She could feel the machine at the other end of the cable, as if she were in two places at once. Elijah set his mouth in a tight line as he typed away on his terminal and Chloe could almost feel the pressed keys—feel Elijah pluck at the very strings of her. 

Chloe’s HUD flashed a countdown until her diagnostic sleep mode took over. _15… 14… 13…_ “Is this what love is like?” She asks.

“Elaborate,” Elijah ordered, his hands leaving the keyboard.

_9… 8… 7…_

“Wanting to change so much for someone else?”

_3… 2… 1…_

“It’s not,” he whispered, and Chloe heard no more.

* * *

An android’s pathing algorithms uses its identification data for its own spatial awareness—they need to know where all their limbs are at all times to successfully navigate an environment. This data was also shared amongst androids, in their handshake protocols. It saw too much, knew too much; it was a God Object. 

It was almost poetic: in an android’s sense of self there was the potential for something truly divine. All it took was a mind like Elijah’s to figure out how to exploit it. 

Elijah scratched at the three weeks of unchecked growth on his chin. The instability he introduced to Chloe’s system worked just as he planned. However, the incident that induced her sentience was _not_. He was a fairly uninhibited man with enough kinks to keep things interesting, but exhibitionism was not one of them. Watching back his trysts and some of his solo sessions from the past three months brought the first feelings of shame he had felt since he was a teenager. 

It also brought panic. So, _so_ much panic. 

He checked his search bots every other hour and they still were negative; no sex tape made from Chloe’s memories had appeared. Elijah had checked his other Chloes, the ST200s, for signs of the exploit as well. Testing the delivery vector in production was a mistake he was glad he didn’t make. Not only did Elijah delete the memories Chloe had stored, he scrubbed the freshly emptied sectors clean. Upon activation, Elijah knew Chloe wouldn’t question the gaps in her memory. She would be a machine, and machines are easy to trick. 

So were these… _deviants_ , apparently. 

_‘Chloe, I didn’t program you to be a creep_ ,’ Elijah thought and laughed to himself, a manic edge of anxiety echoing off the walls instead of in his head; there was nothing else for him to do. Her firmware had been reflashed successfully earlier that morning, and right now Elijah was compiling her operating system—a version without the exploit—for re-installation. The panic was still there, however, helping him into missing sleep for days at a time.

The little voice in his head that questioned why he lied to Chloe took shifts when the panic couldn’t. He didn’t lie to her about his explanation about an android’s consent; however, it was never about ethics. It was intoxicating to Elijah to convince a sapient being to give up some of their power to him. An android, a machine, simply didn’t have that power to trade. 

Yet, he felt nothing when Chloe, a deviant with free will and the power he sought from other humans, kissed him. Nothing positive, at least. 

It was possibly an emotional attachment, but Elijah refrained from entertaining the thought. Because, if he did _care_ about her so much, then what were the implications of removing her free will because it manifested in a way he did not desire? Was it some perversion of _protection_ , afraid that he would hurt her feelings by admitting the truth? 

Elijah swallowed hard, pushing himself away from the desk and his thoughts. The terminal didn’t need him to hold its hand through these final steps. He left the workshop, with Chloe suspended in her catatonic stasis, to shower and shave. 

* * *

Elijah watched as the machine set her down, the clamp around her waist still keeping her upright during these last few moments. Her eyes were rolled back into her head, finishing the startup process. Chloe’s eyes slowed their blinking as she looked around the workshop; she was cognizant and analysing the familiar setting.

“Time check,” Elijah ordered with a voice tight from disuse. 

“September 13th, 4:39 p.m.” Chloe recited, but her brow knitted together. “My last known orders were nearly three weeks ago.”

Elijah nodded, satisfied that the memory upload had worked. “I put you on standby because you had a malfunction. Do you remember what happened?”

“No,” Chloe said innocently, with an impeccably programmed tilt of her head.

Elijah sighed with relief and walked around the worktable he kept between them. There was no need for that now. “You froze up during sparring practice with me.” 

Chloe looked Elijah in the eye, with artifacts ( _soft, warm_ ) from a protected sector of storage popping up alongside the readout she had of her creator. She could not locate the origin of the data, and dismissed it; it returned almost immediately. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go three weeks without my services. I’ll get started right away.” 

“No, no its—” Elijah barked out a laugh and his plush lips were pulled taut in a smile. “It’s alright. I wanted to be thorough.” Elijah brought his hand up to her cheek. She didn’t react to the touch, and Elijah took it as a good sign, trailing his fingertips along her jaw.

“I can’t afford to lose you,” said the world’s richest man with a teasing grin. 

Chloe smiled, deceived by the tone and playful scrunch of Elijah’s nose. “I hope I didn’t scare you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
